Anthony Doerr - All the Light We Cannot See

Fourth Estate

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.4thestate.co.uk

This eBook first published in Great Britain by Fourth Estate in 2014

Copyright © Anthony Doerr 2014

Extract from About Grace © Anthony Doerr 2005

Cover design by Tal Goretsky and Lynn Buckley

Cover photographs: Manuel Clauzier (San Malo); George Eastman House/Getty images (sky)

The right of Anthony Doerr to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.

Source ISBN: 9780008138301

Ebook Edition © April 2015 ISBN: 9780007548682

Version: 2019-06-17

For Wendy Weil

1940–2012

Saint-Malo, the brightest jewel of the Emerald Coast … The city looked picturesque and solid from the sea but as we got near the landing place we realized that the houses visible above the walls were just burnt-out shells … Of the 865 buildings within the walls, only 182 remained standing and all were damaged to some degree.

—Philip Beck

It would not have been possible for us to take power or to use it in the ways we have without the radio.

—Joseph Goebbels

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

Part Zero: 7 August 1944

Leaflets

Bombers

The Girl

The Boy

Saint-Malo

Number 4 rue Vauborel

Cellar

Bombs Away

Part One: 1934

Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle

Zollverein

Key Pound

Radio

Take Us Home

Something Rising

Light

Our Flag Flutters Before Us

Around the World in Eighty Days

The Professor

Sea of Flames

Open Your Eyes

Fade

The Principles of Mechanics

Rumors

Bigger Faster Brighter

Mark of the Beast

Good Evening. Or Heil Hitler if You Prefer.

Bye-bye, Blind Girl

Making Socks

Flight

Herr Siedler

Exodus

Part Two: 8 August 1944

Saint-Malo

Number 4 rue Vauborel

Hotel of Bees

Down Six Flights

Trapped

Part Three: June 1940

Château

Entrance Exam

Brittany

Madame Manec

You Have Been Called

Occuper

Don’t Tell Lies

Etienne

Jungmänner

Vienna

The Boches

Hauptmann

Flying Couch

The Sum of Angles

The Professor

Perfumer

Time of the Ostriches

Weakest

Mandatory Surrender

Museum

The Wardrobe

Blackbirds

Bath

Weakest (#2)

The Arrest of the Locksmith

Part Four: 8 August 1944

The Fort of La Cité

Atelier de Réparation

Two Cans

Number 4 rue Vauborel

What They Have

Trip Wire

Part Five: January 1941

January Recess

He Is Not Coming Back

Prisoner

Plage du Môle

Lapidary

Entropy

The Rounds

Nadel im Heuhaufen

Proposal

You Have Other Friends

Old Ladies’ Resistance Club

Diagnosis

Weakest (#3)

Grotto

Intoxicated

The Blade and the Whelk

Alive Before You Die

No Out

The Disappearance of Hubert Bazin

Everything Poisoned

Visitors

The Frog Cooks

Orders

Pneumonia

Treatments

Heaven

Frederick

Relapse

Part Six: 8 August 1944

Someone in the House

The Death of Walter Bernd

Sixth-floor Bedroom

Making the Radio

In the Attic

Part Seven: August 1942

Prisoners

The Wardrobe

East

One Ordinary Loaf

Volkheimer

Fall

Sunflowers

Stones

Grotto

Hunting

The Messages

Loudenvielle

Gray

Fever

The Third Stone

The Bridge

Rue des Patriarches

White City

Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Telegram

Part Eight: 9 August 1944

Fort National

In the Attic

The Heads

Delirium

Water

The Beams

The Transmitter

Voice

Part Nine: May 1944

Edge of the World

Numbers

May

Hunting (Again)

“Clair de Lune”

Antenna

Big Claude

Boulangerie

Grotto

Agoraphobia

Nothing

Forty Minutes

The Girl

Little House

Numbers

Sea of Flames

The Arrest of Etienne LeBlanc

7 August 1944

Leaflets

Part Ten: 12 August 1944

Entombed

Fort National

Captain Nemo’s Last Words

Visitor

Final Sentence

Music #1

Music #2

Music #3

Out

Wardrobe

Comrades

The Simultaneity of Instants

Are You There?

Second Can

Birds of America

Cease-fire

Chocolate

Light

Part Eleven: 1945

Berlin

Paris

Part Twelve: 1974

Volkheimer

Jutta

Duffel

Saint-Malo

Laboratory

Visitor

Paper Airplane

The Key

Sea of Flames

Frederick

Part Thirteen: 2014

Acknowledgments

About Grace

Also by Anthony Doerr

About the Author

About the Publisher

At dusk they pour from the sky. They blow across the ramparts, turn cartwheels over rooftops, flutter into the ravines between houses. Entire streets swirl with them, flashing white against the cobbles. Urgent message to the inhabitants of this town, they say. Depart immediately to open country.

The tide climbs. The moon hangs small and yellow and gibbous. On the rooftops of beachfront hotels to the east, and in the gardens behind them, a half-dozen American artillery units drop incendiary rounds into the mouths of mortars.

They cross the Channel at midnight. There are twelve and they are named for songs: Stardust and Stormy Weather and In the Mood and Pistol-Packin’ Mama. The sea glides along far below, spattered with the countless chevrons of whitecaps. Soon enough, the navigators can discern the low moonlit lumps of islands ranged along the horizon.